The Irish Independent visited tarot reader, Amanda Healy, who works from a booth in George’s Street Arcade in Dublin city centre.
“I get all different types of customers. I’ve read for doctors, artists, comedians, actors and businesspeople,” Ms Healy, originally from Co Cork, said.
“I mostly read for women. If I have eight people, I’ll have one man that day. I think it’s because women are just more able to open up.
“Some people just want to come to get their future told and they want to know specific things.
“And then other people are looking for guidance because they’re really at a crossroads and they need a bit of hope.”
And after the pandemic, it appears the small business is also catering to those who are looking to the mystic arts to help them kickstart their future.
“I’m getting quite a few people who are not socialising as much,” Ms Healy said.
“Even in people’s cards, it does look like the pandemic did stop a lot of us in our tracks, especially for people who were looking for romance or looking to meet somebody.
“Some people went through an awful lot… and I feel that we are only realising the repercussions now of it, to be honest.”
Ms Healy started doing tarot reading professionally in 2007. She’s been at the arcade since March.
She studied art photography in college and did tarot readings with her friends as a hobby.
She went on to study mediumship at Arthur Findlay College in Stanstead, England in 2008.
The college states that it is “the world’s foremost college for the advancement of spiritualism and psychic sciences”.
“I call it Hogwarts for mediums, because it’s amazing when you go there,” Ms Healy said.
She started doing reading for friends “and they started coming back saying ‘You know, things are coming true'”.
She added: “Tarot is kind of one of the things that you pick up and put down over a lifetime, just because life gets in the way.
“And I always say that there’s like times to be reading and times not to be reading.”
As Halloween approaches, Ms Healy admitted spooky things can happen in the booth.
“There’s definitely been kind of strange synchronicities and funny things happen in here,” she said.
“A few weeks ago I was doing a reading for a lady and I have a radio that plays outside so people can’t hear us speak.
“She was discussing if she should do something or not. And she said ‘Yeah, I suppose I probably shouldn’t do that, should I?’
“The next thing, there must have been a scary Halloween advert on the radio because we just heard a scream across the room, and the two of us jumped out of our seats.
“I like to say the radio is talking to us.”
